Praise for Waste:“Throughout her plainspoken account, Flowers exhibits a prodigious forbearance. The effect is wrenching, as if she had succeeded in Agee’s plan to tear out a piece of the very body of the Black Belt. In Waste she proffers, with humility and without rancor, the plate of excrement that has been served to those like Pam Rush all their lives. The reader must decide what to do with it.”—The New York Review of Books“Flowers brings an invigorating sense of purpose to the page. Waste is written with warmth, grace and clarity. Its straightforward faith in the possibility of building a better world, from the ground up, is contagious.”—New York Times Book Review“Making the case for investment in America’s rural population, this memoir moves from the author’s youthful civil-rights activism to her continuing fight against wastewater-infrastructure injustice.”—The New Yorker“A useful primer on why America's treatment of raw sewage doesn't pass the smell test.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Flowers exposes the true injustice of the situation and how it can be remedied, from both sides of the political spectrum. This is a powerful and moving book that deserves wide readership.”—Booklist“Mixing memoir, civil rights history, and polemic, this blunt litany by Flowers delivers a call to action for all concerned about sustainable solutions to the shamefully inadequate environmental infrastructure, policies, and practices in the United States.”—Library Journal“A gripping, eye-opening story about the lack of access to basic sanitation in parts of the United States.”—Smithsonian“This is a book about justice long overdue, and it' s also a book for our pregnant moment, as movements combatting racism, inequality, and climate change converge to win a radically transformed future.”—Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for the Green New Deal“Catherine Coleman Flowers's important new book shows us how ordinary people can stand up, fight back, and build a government and an economy that works for all of us. Together, we can and we must guarantee clean water and sanitation as a right for all.”—U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)“Catherine Flowers is a trailblazer in the environmental and climate justice movement, and her life story serves as an inspiration for activists, educators, and anyone who wants to use their voice to make a difference.”—Former vice president Al Gore“Catherine Coleman Flowers's life story is a testament to the importance of sustained activism, a compassionate heart bound by justice, and a commitment to political clarity informed by the dark annals of history. If you care about environmental justice, racial justice, and class reckoning, this book is a lodestar.”—Regina Hall, actor and environmental activist with The Solutions Project“I never imagined that a book about raw sewage would be a real page-turner but Catherine Flowers's Waste is just that. When the United Nations considers access to sanitation a basic human right, it is shocking that in this wealthiest of nations the most challenged and forgotten people continue to be flushed and forgotten. This book is a stunning eye-opener.”—Jane Fonda, actor, activist, and author“When you combine the ecological expertise of Rachel Carson, the dogged determination of Erin Brockovich, and the lifelong passion for equality of John Lewis, you get Catherine Flowers. Catherine's story and her work in Lowndes County should motivate all of us to ensure that environmental injustice will no longer be America's dirty secret.”—John Kerry, 68th U.S. Secretary of State“From the southern states, there have always been strong women who stood and fought for justice. To names like Fannie, Rosa, and Amelia, we must now add Catherine Flowers. Waste is the story of her work to organize communities against environmental racism. The fight is in her soul and because it is the truth, it will be exposed.”—Rev. Dr. William Barber II“Combining careful research, a powerful personal story, and bringing to life the rich legacy and civil rights history of Lowndes County, Alabama, Waste is a gift and a must-read for any activist, educator, or individual on the path to transforming our country towards justice and equity for all. ”—Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement“Catherine Flowers drops us headlong into areas in our country where descendants of slaves continue to be held captive by racial, environmental, and climate injustices. She uses her personal journey and her gift of storytelling to force us to open our eyes and see how Black people in our country have been systemically and purposefully left behind to literally wallow in their own waste.”—Gina McCarthy, former U.S. EPA administrator under President Obama and current president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council“Embodying the spirit of my late father, Muhammad Ali, this story is life changing, transcends all boundaries, and streamlines what matters through Catherine Flowers's powerful voice. Her passion and commitment to fight for sanitation for all is as inspirational as it is aspirational. Waste provides a guide to uplifting the voices of the forgotten.”—Khaliah Ali Wertheimer
11/01/2020
Who pays serious attention to the millions of Americans living with or near conditions such as raw sewage, toxic water, and poisonous air? Flowers does. The founder and director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ) uncovers the unsettling details of living standards in stretches of her native Alabama as well as the urban Midwest, central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, Hawaii, Native American reservations, and elsewhere. Her account follows her activism that received attention for social justice work, from high school in Lowndes County through college to teaching at public schools in Washington, DC, Fayetteville, NC, and Detroit, and then back to Lowndes County to organize around environmental justice issues. She describes leading CREEJ to help address both immediate and systemic impacts of inadequate sanitation, health disparities, and poverty in communities marginalized because of who lives there—people who policymakers and society at large dismiss as not worthy of respect, she notes. The book includes a foreword by Bryan Stevenson. VERDICT Mixing memoir, civil rights history, and polemic, this blunt litany by Flowers delivers a call to action for all concerned about sustainable solutions to the shamefully inadequate environmental infrastructure, policies, and practices in the United States.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
2020-08-25
An environmental activist with the Equal Justice Initiative exposes an alarming rate of hookworm in an Alabama county with inadequate wastewater management.
Imagine that your septic system fails after you lost your job because of Covid-19 or another disaster. Your yard turns into a sewer, and you don’t have thousands of dollars for a new tank. Flowers shows that if your state enforces laws that criminalize the failure to maintain a legal septic tank, you could also get arrested. She sees such tragedies frequently among the mostly poor, Black residents of Lowndes County, where “an estimated 90 percent of households have failing or inadequate wastewater systems.” In an imperfect blend of memoir and reporting, the author recalls her years of work to ease conditions so unsanitary a U.N. official said he hadn’t seen them “in the first world.” With admirable tenacity, Flowers cultivated reporters; got help from Jane Fonda; took Cory Booker to visit a man whose backyard “held a pit full of waste piped straight from his toilet”; and persuaded Baylor doctors to conduct a study of the region, which found that 34.5% of tested residents had hookworm, a disease of poor sanitation that many people thought the U.S. had eradicated. Similarly dire sewage problems, she shows, exist in places from Appalachia to the San Joaquin Valley. In a largely chronological narrative, Flowers tends to present facts in the order in which she learned them—not when readers most need to know them—and slows the pace with overlong digressions into her earlier years and unedifying passages on topics such as “turning lemons into lemonade” and the effect of Jonathan Livingston Seagullon her life. The urgent message of the book, however, transcends its writing lapses, and it should raise much-needed awareness of a public health catastrophe.
A useful primer on why America’s treatment of raw sewage doesn’t pass the smell test.
